


Damn Comic Books

by Its_Raineing_Words



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Awkward Crush, Crushes, F/M, Gift Exchange, Gift Giving, Joel is kind of dumb, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Requited Unrequited Love, seriously though Joel needs to chill the fuck out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 09:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6045727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Its_Raineing_Words/pseuds/Its_Raineing_Words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all starts with those damn comic books and ends with Joel losing his shit, needless to say, he's in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damn Comic Books

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn't the first TLoU fanfic I've written but it is the first one I've post as the other one has gotten lost. The title took me far too long to come up with considering how shit it is but you'll have to forgive me for that.

It all starts with those damn comic books she’s so fond of, Ellie was going on about them constantly as they trekked through the corrupted husk of Pittsburgh and he regretted ever letting her keep that first copy when he spots it poking out from under a piece of rubble as they search yet another convenience store for anything approaching usefulness. Joel carefully looks over to Ellie who is immersed in looking at the posters on the wall and not helping him in his searching or looking for danger which annoys him but not for long as he quickly bend down to pick the comic book up which was relatively undamaged considering where it had been and shoved it quickly into his pack before telling Ellie to ‘quit lollygagging and help me search this damn place’, she grumbled a hell of a lot but complied even if she did ‘whistle’ the entire time. 

That evening, once they had finished their round of searching and had some progress walking about nearly twenty miles they settled down for the night in an what Joel guessed to be an abandoned accountancy firm. Once he explained to Ellie all he knew about accountants which wasn’t all that much he tried to think of a way to give her the comic without it being too awkward. He knew how he seemed to her, a rough, grumpy old man and it was a fair assessment in truth, especially these days. After a few minutes of deliberation, however, he decided to just grow the fuck up and give her the comic, he could take down a clicker no problem so why would a teenage girl scare him?   
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She squealed, moving to hug him before obviously thinking better of it, she smiled at him shyly instead.   
“Um, you’re welcome. Though don’t expect any more of those, I don’t have to time to go looking for them and neither do you.” Joel said sternly, realising belatedly that the way he spoke suggested he wanted to go looking for them. He didn’t.   
“Psh, like I don’t know that. We’re on super-secret Firefly business, remember?” Ellie’s voice took on the light, teasing air it always did when she wanted to pull a smile out of him.  
“I remember. Now would you kindly shut up, we need to get some sleep if we’re going to make any progress tomorrow.” Joel felt bad every time he shut her banter down but he had to keep a distance from her, it was getting more dangerous for him every time he saw he delighted smile or heard one of her witty comments that only she could have thought of.

Ellie huffed and gave him the silent treatment for the of the night but Joel knew it was for the best, especially about ten minutes after her breathing evened out he spilled into his hand, her name perilously close to his lips. No one really cared anymore if you were into teenage girls, too busy fighting zombies, humans and hunger alike but Joel cared. He saw too damn much of everything good he had ever had taken away from him in Ellie and she didn’t deserve an old man, even if she thought she did. Ellie commented that he was even more grumpy than usual that morning and she was right, he’d had an awful night’s sleep, waking in starts every half hour due to stress and not being to drop back off for at least another twenty minutes after he’d woken. 

About midday they reached what had obviously been the shopping district but had more recently been a camp for a group of hunters judging by the tents but even they had clearly moved on as well. Joel scanned the area and saw nothing but better safe than sorry he searched the perimeter for traps, hunters or infected, finding none he signalled for Ellie to help him search. The shops had been picked clean but the hunters who camped there before had left in a hurry so there were quite a few salvageable items. Ellie had skipped off into one of the shops with the promise that she’d be out in two minutes to help him search through the various bits and bobs strewn about.   
“Goddamn it, Ellie! It’s been more than two minutes, get your butt out here. Now.” He groused, pushing down not-quite-irrational worry, he worried about her all the time.  
“Christ! Alright!” The redhead hollered before bounding up to him, “So, you find anything useful? A machine gun maybe?”   
“Nothin’ that useful, found some tins, though. C’mon, help me sort through this shit.” With that he turned and walked over to one of the tents where the hunters had obviously cooked their food, it was dangerous to look at her too long. She was a bit like the sun like that.  
“Ha, yeah, hunters aren’t known for their tidiness, huh?” Ellie sniggered, trailing behind him faithfully.  
“They surely are not. Now let’s get moving,” Joel scanned his surroundings again before looking at the sun which was beginning to get low in the sky, “I wanna walk another five miles before making camp tonight.”  
“Joel! You can’t really mean that no one wants to walk five miles.” The (too goddamn young) girl trotted ahead of him as she spoke, twisting round to flash him cow eyes.  
“You know what I mean, kid.” Joel grumbled, fighting a smile.   
“I can’t say I do, I’ll just have to take your word for it, pardner.” Up until recently Ellie had mostly stayed away from mocking his Texan drawl but she’d started doing it and he wished she’d stop, it was far too cute for her own good.  
“Shuddup and get searchin’, girl.” Joel growled in warning.   
Ellie huffed but didn’t say anything else for a while.  
“Hey Joel, I’d tell you a chemistry joke but I know I wouldn’t get a reaction.”  
Silence.  
“I’m emotionally constipated, I haven’t given a shit in days.”   
More silence.   
“Thieves had broken into my house and stolen everything except my soap, shower gel, towels and deodorant. Dirty Bastards.”   
A snort.  
“Fuck yeah! I’ll break you one day, Joel!”  
“We’ll see....” 

Ellie managed to coax Joel into a conversation though he had no idea how she managed it, she complained for two hours straight and he was ready to throttle her, gorgeous or no, by the it was time to make camp. Despite everything though she was practically bouncing with energy, obviously excited about something and honest to God he was a little scared to ask.  
“Jo-o-el?” She extended his name a few syllables and his heart throbbed.   
“What?” It came out a lot less grumpy than he had intended it to.   
“I’ve got something for ya, I'm not sure whether it’s something you’ll like but I heard lots of the soldiers going on about Harley’s in the Zone. I saw it and thought ‘hey, Joel seems like the sort of person who would appreciate this’ since I know you like bikes already.” Oh yeah, he had told her about his little trip with Tommy across America before the world when to shit at some point, must’ve done.   
“Yeah? Go on, enough with your yappin’ let’s see this whatever it is-I wanna get some shut-eye.” Joel said.   
Ellie fidgeted and he noticed that she had her hands behind her back, “Um, ta-da!”   
Joel gasped, hands clenching at his sides, “How did you find this?”   
“Ah, well, remember that shop I was in? Yeah, none of the original merchandise was in there but one of them must have been sleeping there because all his stuff was there. He’d left in a hurry but he’d taken all of the useful stuff but left half his closet behind. Most of them were torn to shreds, useless. But this wasn't, he must’ve been taking care of it, it was musty as fuck though so I washed it and now I’m giving it to you so you can look almost as badass as me.” Ellie was rambling and she visibly shut herself up at his unchanged face.  
“I...Ellie...thank you.” He tugged the shirt from her grip, the gift meant a lot to him. Not just because he had always wanted a Harley Before and had to settle for the t-shirts but because it had been her that had given it to him. It had been years since he’d gotten anything more than a pair of socks off anyone and the tenderness in her actions reached somewhere inside of him he had been trying to keep hidden for her sake.   
“You’re welcome, I guess. Seriously dude it was no trouble, you’ve done so much for me, it’s fine.” She was blushing hard, Joel tried to ignore it. Ignore the signals so blatant she might as well have had a neon sign saying ‘I like you’ above her head. Tried.   
Against his better judgement he wrapped an arm around her, “Still, thank you. I’ve been needing a new shirt anyway and this’ll be warm.”   
Ellie burrowed into his chest ever so slightly and hummed in acknowledgement, Joel was content to stay like that for a moment before his conscience caught up with him.  
“I’m glad you like that shirt, Joel because I had to search through that dude’s clothes, do you have any idea how many pairs of jizzy underwear I had to touch? Cause I do, in detail.” With that, the somber mood was broken.  
“Jesus Christ! The things you say sometimes, girl.” Joel knew he was in serious trouble but for once couldn’t be bothered to fight it too much.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright! So if you're reading this I can safely assume you've read this and I can only hope you like it. Kudos, Comments and the like show me that I'm doing a good job and will encourage me to write more if you've got anything you'd want me to write you're more than welcome to send it to my Tumblr: Rainefeelsthings 
> 
> That's it, I guess. Again, I hope you liked it and I hope I got their voices correctly. I'll probably do something from Ellie's POV next but doing something from Joel's was a challenge. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! :)


End file.
